Organized by theme and genre, this collection reveals unexpected connections and shared preoccupations, which should enable the reader to view the Romantics in a fresh light. Thus Blake, Wordsworth and Shelley appear as masters of comedy; Burns and Byron speak of the relationship between man and nature; and Coleridge, Keats and Clare explore the Gothic and surreal. The acknowledged genius of Blake's Tyger, Coleridge's Kubla Khan and Shelley's Ozymandias is set alongside verse from less familiar figures, including a strong representation of women poets such as Charlotte Smith, Felicia Hemans and Letitia Elizabeth Landon.